Within the healthcare sector, there are great science communicators and highly respected scientific societies active on social media, especially on Twitter. Their updated content provides real value to the healthcare sector itself, to businesses, and to society in general, who can follow them as a benchmark and a reliable source of information. Nowadays, any individual or organization can curate a customized news or information channel by using a news aggregator or by following key people, organizations, institutions, and companies on Twitter. Furthermore, anyone or any entity can start a blog—a micro-media outlet—to reach a wide readership and build their own personal brand.
Although some like to complicate things to the extreme, to summarize and simplify, your personal brand is your professional identity signature. With the rise of the Internet and Social Networks many years ago, the concept emerged that every individual is a brand in their own right. What you share on your blog and/or social media accounts reflects who you are, your interests, and your expertise—generating value and building your personal brand.
If done well, your followers will recognize these core traits, allowing companies and institutions to discover you as a professional. Let’s look at a couple of simple examples:
As a company planning an event, I am searching for a speaker who is a specialist in Drug Intoxications.
Most likely, I will run an online search. If I can’t find you on the Internet, regardless of how exceptional a professional you are, I won’t know you exist (you effectively don’t exist online), and therefore I cannot invite you to my event. You lose an opportunity, I lose a great speaker, and attendees miss out on your expertise and insights.
You speak at a conference, but you have neither a blog nor a Twitter profile.
You participate in our event because a mutual friend recommended you. Ahem, not just because we’re in Spain, but because we love networking! 😛 During your talk, the audience wants to know more about you. The vast majority of attendees will look for you on Twitter to keep following your content and perspectives. Not finding you is a loss for both sides and for society at large, which will miss out on your work. Without social media or a blog, sharing your knowledge relies entirely on intermediaries: professional journals, traditional media, etc. In the Technology Era, do you really want to stay dependent on gatekeepers?
Two simple reasons showing how essential it is for any professional to have an online presence and build their personal brand. It seems hard to believe we have to write this in 2018, but we know it’s necessary. Let me keep going…
More and more healthcare professionals are recognizing the potential of the Internet and Social Media. Instead of complaining about the lack of reliable online content, they are creating and sharing it themselves.
In this regard, we want to contribute by helping these professionals avoid the most common mistakes we see in the healthcare sector across blogs, websites, and social media platforms.
Just as you aim to present your best professional image—showing up groomed to work, with a clean lab coat or uniform, an orderly office or consultation room—your blog, website, and social media channels reflect your image as well. It is your workplace: care for it, organize it, keep it clean. Do you think patients feel comfortable if you greet them with a tomato-sauce-stained coat and folders strewn across the floor? You are the same professional, but their perception will be vastly different. Here are key recommendations based on this principle:
Whether in blogs, websites, posters, presentations, or digital magazines, design is paramount. Visual presentation creates the first impression, and it is unacceptable that major professional associations, medical or nursing boards, and communicators continue using obsolete designs across their websites, slide decks, and publications…
Today, users access content across multiple devices: tablets, desktops, laptops, smartphones… Therefore:
Now that we’ve highlighted these key areas for improvement, we’d like to recommend a few resources you can use to address them.
In addition to these resources, visit well-designed blogs and websites and inspect the social profiles of colleagues to train your eye. Pay attention to details: color palettes, typography hierarchy, and content formatting.
We hope this article is helpful and inspires you to keep improving. If you made it this far, you probably found this content interesting—don’t keep it to yourself! Sharing value is a core trait of great communicators. Go ahead and share!
En el sector del ocio, la formación continua es la mejor herramienta de prevención.
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